


Seven for Joy

by aderyn



Series: The Bird Diviner [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Crows & Ravens, Doctor John, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fractured Fairy Tale, John the Soldier, Magical Sherlock, sea-faring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 10:15:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It smells like the sea in his lonely bedroom.</p>
<p>Captain John Watson, a voice whispers, come aboard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven for Joy

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Welsh tale [The Crows](http://books.google.com/books?id=yOBZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false).
> 
> The tale's about a man having a vision of his own death. What if it were about a man having a vision of his new life?

  
  
It smells like the sea in his lonely bedroom.  
  
 _Captain John Watson,_ a voice whispers _, come aboard._  
  
 _You didn't die in the sands._

_You didn’t die in the war._  
  
 _You're not dead now._  
  
 _Come aboard._

*******

The dream-ship has seven crows in its rigging.

St. Elmo’s fire an indigo lick at the masts.

Fogbow starboard over the cold sea.

Faerie magic if ever he saw it.

_Bean shith._

Death.

*******

He wakes to a wind out of the east, shoulders his work, limps to it.

“Never seen anything strange as that,” he says to his colleague, “sleeping or waking, in the field or at the surgery, or anywhere in between. What do you think it means?”

“Are you all right, John?” Michael Stamford says.

“Got shot,” John says, “nearly died.”

“Yes,” Stamford says, “I heard.”

“Think it was more than dream.”

“I don’t know, “says Stamford, “but I know someone who might.”

*******

The stranger in the laboratory is wearing a black coat with the sleeves pushed up.

He rolls his strange eyes at Stamford and drinks John in with a look.

“The sand or the sea?” he asks.

“What?” says John, “both.”

“There’s always something,” says the stranger.

His eyes are the colour of bayberries.

“Sit down,” he says.

*******

John sits while Stamford slips out the door.

“You saw seven crows with their tails turned in the rigging of a ship,” the stranger says.

There are chemicals, compounds blue and red; minerals, silver and gold, on the workbench.

A compendium of medicinal plants.

A cluster of dark feathers.

Some small bones.

“How did  you...” John says, “who are you?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” says the stranger, “I see you, John Watson. You think you want death.”

_You don’t._

*******

“I can solve your problem,” Sherlock says.

His eyes are the oddest John’s ever seen.

One of them twitches. The lid drops like a wing.

“Problem?” says John.

“I can help you. But you have to promise not to follow me.”

“All right,” John says.

Two fingers light on his cold wrist.

"Give more your word," Sherlock says.

"I'll give you my bond," says John.

Two nights later, the moon half-full, Sherlock slips into the coat, fills the pockets, strides out to a bare ring in the sea-cliff saltgrass.

John follows, limpless, with his pistol at his back.

*******

“Give him back,” Sherlock says to the air, calls fire from his pockets, calls moonlight to his fingertips, “give him back.”

“Never,” says a voice, and there’s a crow, calling, and a woman aglow with green, a dagger bright in her hand, “he’s ours to take aboard, to sail the sunless sea and never return.”

“Not while I live,” Sherlock says.

There’s a flash of fire.

The flash of a blade.

“Stop!” John shouts, fires.

The green light goes out. Sherlock drops to the ground.

John puts his hands to the wound and presses.

“Keep calm,” he says, “I’ll have you mended soon.”

Sherlock rests his cold hand over John’s.

“Thank you,” he says, “sleep now.”

_Wake to your new life._

*******

John wakes sticky in the saltgrass.

To the bitterness of gunsmoke.

The shade of a black bird lifting away.

Sherlock is gone.

*******

Sherlock’s house, address begged from Stamford, is empty.

The laboratory is empty.

Stamford can give no answers.

“Disappeared did he,” he says, “doesn’t surprise me.”

“Saved you though, didn’t he?”

_And I him,_ John thinks, _or almost_.

He’s cursing the leg in the high street when a young woman accosts him with a bundle of rosemary and flowering thyme.

“Molly,” she says. Her shirt’s the color of sea-glass.

“From the garden,” she says.

“A gift from the dead,” she whispers.

_Keep it close._

*******

John’s heart pounds, the surf on the sand.

A soldier’s trained not to weep.

A doctor’s trained not to weep.

Not for all the death in the world.

*******

The next day the wind shifts to fair.

John drinks rosemary tea on the widow’s walk.  
  
The breeze lifts his hair and ruffles the wild beach rose.

A sip. A blink and a breath.  
  
A man in a tattered black coat's coming up the front path, with a wild smile and the feather of a sea-raven twisting in his brim.

“Have you got your magic pistol still, Doctor Watson?” he calls.

Dunelight flickers in his strange eyes.

Oh, for joy.

“Sherlock!” John calls.  
  
He smells like the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Bean shith-Scottish, 'fairy woman', banshee  
> [Wild beach rose](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UMaz8Sm88Ug/TdBI29Ej8-I/AAAAAAAAA8A/TFn96CY0YHg/s1600/IMG_4389.JPG)  
> [The cormorant, or sea raven](http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenkadettc/4914984423/)
> 
>  "One black crow, bad luck for me.  
> Two black crows, good luck for me.  
> Three black crows, a son shall be born in the family.  
> Four black crows, a daughter shall be born in the family.  
> Five black crows shall be a funeral in the family.  
> Six black crows, if they fly head on, a sudden death.  
> Seven black crows with their tails towards you, death within seven  
> years." (Just one version of many... Yours?)


End file.
